The present invention relates to a method and system for devising a template for validating currency. The invention also relates to a method and system, in particular a self-service system such as an automated teller machine, for automatically validating or authenticating currency.
Banks and financial institutions have an increasing need to provide their customers with an expanding range of high standard financial self-services. The most popular and well-established service currently available is the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM). At present, ATMs are primarily used to allow customers to access personal financial information and to dispense cash. However, there is an increasing requirement to provide secure deposit transaction capabilities to complement these traditional ATM services.
Although some ATMs that can accept cheque and banknote deposits are available, only a limited number of these allow the validation and confirmation of the authenticity of the enclosed currency or cheques to be completed by the ATM. Instead, more generally, bank personnel have to manually confirm the validity of the deposit before completing the transaction and, in the case of a cash deposit, authorizing the re-circulation of the banknotes. For cash deposits, this is a problem, because it means that there is often a significant delay between receipt of the banknotes at the ATM and re-circulation of these notes.
Automated currency verification and validation systems for incorporation in ATMs have been proposed, and indeed some are currently available. The aim of these is to allow deposited banknotes to be verified and validated within an ATM and then re-circulated as part of the withdrawal service of that same ATM. However, a fundamental danger of automated currency validation is the possibility of utilizing a currency recycling facility within ATMs as a means of circulating counterfeit currency.
At present, in order to validate currency classical pattern recognition techniques are used. For these to be effective, a representative sample of both genuine and counterfeit currency has to be available to devise discriminator templates. All other notes are compared with these discriminator templates. Notes that are identified as genuine are accepted. All other notes, such as counterfeits or defaced genuine notes or unknown notes, are rejected. In current systems, the templates are prepared manually by the observation of collected data and by putting more emphasis on some of the data than others. However, this handcrafted template approach is very time consuming and costly, and prevents rapid reaction to new counterfeits. Manufacture of the templates is done centrally, which requires the movement of data or notes and the use of an expert craftsman to carry out the work. This means that the templates can take several weeks to prepare, which in turn means that there is a delay between issuance of new currency, and the inevitable new counterfeits, and a validation mechanism for banks.